Williamstown Theatre Festival

Launching the fall season of Boston's Huntington Theatre Company the renowned director and creator Mary Zimmerman returns with a new musical adapted from Kipling's The Jungle Book. Previously she directed the Leonard Bernstein musical Candide. Adding to an extensive prior dialogue we corresponded with Zimmerman about the new production which may be New York bound.

This summer at Shakespeare & Company John Douglas Thompson has performed the supporting role of The Cook to have the chance to work with the 82--year-old Olympia Dukakis in Brecht's Mother Courage. This is a revised version of the original posting with further reflection on the unique challenges of performing a play by Brecht.

As a producer, rather than director or actor, as was the case in recent years, Jenny Gersten approaches being artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival as a full time, year round job. Her role as CEO is as important to her as making the artistic decisions of planning a season. She describes enjoying fundraising and marketing because it is driven by her passion for one of America's most renowned regional theatre companies,

For her third season as artistic director of the Williamstown Theater Festival Jenny Gersten produced an amazing three musicals in a program of seven productions. Bridges of Madison County opens on Broadway in January but Gersten insists her mandate is to create shows for Williamstown. We met to discuss the season which ends this weekend. This is part one of that dialogue.

The season ending Blood Play by the experimental The Debate Society takes place in the 1950s during an impromptu cocktail party in the renovated, pine paneled basement of a newly settled suburban Jewish couple. Their traumatized son Ira is living in a tent in the back yard. This may be the most controversial and "debated" play of the Williamstown Theatre Festival season.

A new play by Mark St. Germain "Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah" will run at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass from August 15 through September 29. It was commissioned for the Contemporary American Theatre Festival where we saw it earlier this summer in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. We met for breakfast to discuss changes for the still evolving play which is now in its eighth draft.

With daily notes, rewrites, cuts and rehearsals the world premiere of the musical Bridge of Madison County will be quite different by the time in ends its run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival on August 18. After a layover to solidify the changes of this production it will go into rehearsal with a Broadway opening in January. While clearly a work in progress we enjoyed much of what we saw. Hopefully it will hit the ground running in New York.

Twenty three years ago Ed Herendeen left an administrative position at Williamstown Theatre Festival to found Contemporary American Theatre Festival for Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. There out of the glare of the urban theatre world he has nurtured the creation of 100 new plays through commissions, premieres and second productions. He strives to create an environment which is review proof and writers are able to experiment without fear of failure.

During a visit to the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shephardstown, West Virginia we met with the artistic director Ed Herendeen. We discussed the process of commissioning Mark St. Germain's Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah. It transfers soon to Barrington Stage Company. We debated the controversial Modern Terrorism which we had seen the previous evening. This is the first of two parts of that lively dialogue.

Since a world premiere and mixed reviews at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge in 2010 the musical Johnny Baseball has undergone extensive revisions. On the intimate Nikos Stage its a hit for the Williamstown Theatre Festival where is has a short run through August 3. While feisty and mostly upbeat the energy shifts from fan outrage over the alleged Curse of the Bambino to a love story and the complex theme of institutional racism. That's at least three balls to keep in the air. Take away the fan base for the Red Sox and Yankees in the Berkshires and you wonder if the show has the momentum to make the playoffs.

As a strong willed, crafty and independent guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle sold flowers to support herself. As a refined lady, transformed through a wager between the linguists Professor Henry Higgins and his colleague Colonel Pickering, in order to survive in circa 1913 London, she is forced to sell herself. As Shaw wrote his feminist inspired play there was no happy ending. Few if any directors have adhered to his intent which infuriated Shaw. In this stunning Williamstown production director Nicholas Martin provides a new twist,.

The Williamstown Theatre Festival (WTF) season is in high gear. We attended the first WTF press conference to cover the next two productions of 'Pygmalion' by George Bernard Shaw and Johnny Baseball, the Boston Red Sox story, now a musical. It turned out to be a lively event!

Initially Mass MoCA director Joe Thompson denied that there would be a new Kiefer Building. We reported it anyway ages ago. Thompson confirmed it during a recent interview and now its official as reported today in the Berkshire Eagle. The fun begins on September 27.

I think I saw a great production of Tom Stoppard's Hapgood, starring Kate Burton at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. But then there's the Uncertainty Principle. Whether one enjoys this show depends upon whether you view it from a Newtonian or Quantum Mechanics point of view. It may or may not be the best drama of the Berkshire season. In a Stoppardesque sense.

If shows are not instant hits in regional theaters they rarely get a second chance. It is especially difficult to develop musicals. Johnny Baseball, a musical about the Boston Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino, opened at American Repertory Theatre in June, 2010. The idea started in 2003 and development, with six new songs and other changes continues. It opens on July 24 at Williamstown Theatre Festival. During a recent press conference we asked about love/ hate relationships which resulted in Globe critic Louise Kennedy losing her job in reaction to her Johnny Baseball review.

Robert Sean Leonard appeared as Dr. Wilson the best friend of the curmudgeon Hugh Laurie's Dr. House from 2004 to 2012. They shot 175 episodes of the TV series House. That left Leonard the financial freedom to pick and choose roles in theatre. From July 17 to 27 he stars at Williamstown Theatre Festival as Professor Henry Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion directed by Nicholas Martin. The production, with changes, originated at the Old Globe in San Diego.

While a graduate student at Yale Kate Burton first performed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1980 with Frank Langella and Christopher Reeve as leading men. In 1987 she returned with her husband , Michael Ritchie, who later took over as artistic director, with Jenny Gersten as his associate. From July 10 to 21 she stars at WTF in Tom Stoppard's Hapgood. She took time from rehearsals to discuss finding her own way in theatre as the daughter of Richard Burton. Next year Nicholas Martin will direct Kate and her son Morgan Ritchie in Chekhov's The Seagull for Boston's Huntington Theatre.

Bess Wohl returns to Williamstown Theatre Festival for her sixth season and second as a playwright. American Hero a send up of the fast food industry and corporate America is a side splitting hoot. While a hilarious play it also leaves us with food for thought. As Jack Nicholson would say "Give me a BLT but hold the lettuce, hold the bacon and hold the tomato." Or ham on wry.

This time next year the Clark Art Institute will open its Tadao Ando designed campus expansion. Mass MoCA unveils its new Anselm Kiefer building this fall. That adds to its existing Sol LeWitt building. The resultant boost in visitation, as well as more events like the recent Solid Sound Festival, are a part of plans for the expansion and growth of business, tourism and jobs for a region with twice the rate of state unemployment. That's down from seven times the unemployment rate in the early 1990s.

Since moving to Vermont film and television actor, Treat Williams, is getting more involved with theatre in the Berkshires. We spoke with him following opening night of The Lion in Williams, with Jayne Atkinson, for Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge. With its star billing the play is sure to be a top draw for the 2013 season. He talked about working with South African playwright Athol Fugard.

In 2009 Henry Wishcamper adapted and directed the Marx Brothers musical Animal Crackers for the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Now he has restaged it in a lively and thoroughly entertaining production which launches the 59th season of the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Through July 13 what's not to like? Enjoy.

The 66th Annual Tony Award Ceremony took place on CBS on Sunday, June 9, 2013. One of the most prestigious and coveted honors in the entertainment industry, the Tonys recognize the best of theatrical and artistic achievement on stage in America. This year Boston theatres won five awards. A.R.T.'s Pippin won four and the Huntington Theatre Company won for the Best Regional theatre. Well-deserved on all counts.

Brooks Ashmanskas, De'Adre Aziza, Reed Birney, Joey Slotnick, and Omar Metwally are among the actors who will take part in this Williamstown Theatre Festival summer’s productions. Dominique Morisseau has been awarded WTF’s 2013 L. Arnold Weissberger Award for Playwriting for her play Paradise Blue. She will receive a $10,000 grant and receive a reading as part of WTF’s FRIDAYS@3 series, as well as publication by Samuel French, Inc.

Traditionally it was anathema for critics to talk to and socialize with those they write about. With print in decline and the rise of blogs that has changed. But what happens when we are all in bed with each other? It both enriches our understanding and compromises objectivity. The third and final installment of a dialogue with Julianne Boyd may be a case in point.

Surprise. Like every other regional theatre company Barrington Stage has scheduled Clybourne Park. What are the consequences when theatre companies all over America are presenting a short list of recent Broadway and Off Broadway plays and musicals? Does it mean a dumbing down of American Theatre with long term negative consequence?. Two of Barrington's productions this season On the Town and The Chosen have been recently presented by Boston's Lyric Stage.